The electrolytic process of making aluminum is well known and represents a highly important industrial process. For maximum efficiency and safety, the manipulative steps required for operation of the furnaces currently are carried out under remote control by an operator and there have been numerous automatic or semi-automatic devices developed for this purpose. Ordinarily, a production line of aluminum furnaces will constitute one or more rows of these furnaces and the automated equipment for serving the furnaces normally takes the form of some kind of movable equipment which ordinarily will include an operator's cab and from which the various tools and equipment remotely are controlled as the movable equipment travels from place to place down the line of furnaces between them to perform the requisite crust breaking, anode changing or adjusting and charging operation essential for proper operation of the furnaces. There has also been proposed various means by which a single portable or traveling device may be accommodate to service plural rows of furnaces. For example, with an overhead traveling device which is supported from rails disposed along the opposite sides of a row of furnaces, various means have been developed to translate the overhead device from one set of rails over one row of furnaces to another set of rails over another row of furnaces parallel to the first and so on. However, such arrangements have required the layout of furnaces in each row to be identical so that the traveling apparatus may similarly service each row. Among other things, the requirement for similarity between the rows of the furnaces is required in order properly to achieve the overhead charging of the furnaces with alumina. Furthermore, the devices of the prior art are fraught with one or more disadvantages inherent in attempting remotely to control the tools and equipment for servicing the furnaces within the constraint of performing there services as effectively as had previously been accomplished by manual manipulation. That is to say, particularly in the area of curst breaking, it is difficult at best to provide a remotely controlled tool which can reach into all areas of the furnace and break the crust as efficiently as previously been done by hand and this continues to present a vexing problem in the art.